The United States Joint Commission has set National Patient Safety Goals for 2014-2016 that requires healthcare organizations to address alarm fatigue by “establishing policies and procedures for managing alarms” by “checking individual alarm signals for accurate settings.” Alarm monitors receive vital signs from patients and send alerts if one or more vital signs exceed one or more minimum or maximum threshold limit values. For example, if a patient's respiration rate rises to a predetermined threshold value or alternatively falls to a predetermined threshold value, an audible or visual message is sent to one or more healthcare practitioners. Monitors are typically delivered with default settings based on literature of the general population, e.g. a normal adult respiration rate is 12-20 breaths per minute. But, populations with different medical conditions may have a different nominal respiration rate. Healthcare organizations are encouraged to review the default settings according to the patient population served and customize the settings according to each healthcare organization policies.
Healthcare organizations typically rely on the default settings, which generate alarms contributing to alarm fatigue. Many healthcare organizations are without mechanisms to identify and manage alarm settings which are appropriate to the patient populations served. Healthcare organizations have relied upon individual healthcare practitioners to identify and change alarm settings for individual patients. Healthcare practitioners are unfortunately not in a position to address customized alarm settings for each patient. Healthcare practitioners may pause or cancel nuisance alarms, and may sometimes change individual settings for a patient based on a history or known condition for the patient. Changing individual alarm settings for a patient calls for a clear understanding of each alarm setting associated with a vital sign, and an evaluation of potential changes in relation to the possible outcomes for the patient, which may be a daunting proposition for the healthcare practitioner managing a group of patients in a dynamic environment. Hence, a gap exists between the default settings and the settings appropriate for each individual patient, which will reduce the overall alarm fatigue. In other words, for situations of a patient having alarms, there are typically no alternatives to the default alarm limit settings that are readily available to a healthcare practitioner or a method to identify alternative alarm settings.